Andrew Ferguson dot NET

YeeeHaaa! School is finially out, and I must say, it’s about time. Summer vacation is finally among myself and a few selected individuals until the 19th (that’s when public schools get out). Linchpin was finally released and work on the sequal, 2435, is underway. P.S. I also changed over from Xitami to Apache…so if somethings are working right…drop me a line: andrew@fergcorp.com

School started officially on Monday. And with that starting, so did my final year as a Senior. How sad. Not really. I actually have quite a nice class load: Physics, Biotech, Vocal, Honors English (my school doesn’t have AP or IB classes), Study, Calc II, and American Government.

I finially got my VPN working. This is good for two reasons:

1. I have a secure transport layer for my Wireless card
2. I have a transport layer that is secure for when I am at school so I can get access to my files on my server. This should pave the way for remote back-ups. How exciting!

This is a going to be a two part post:
First, I got my DNA results back.
No, I’m not suffering from any sort of ailment, in fact, the DNA that I had
profiled as part of my BioTech course was “Junk” DNA, more specifically, mtDNA.
Here goes:

GTTCTTTTTT TTTGGAAGCA GATTTGGGTA CCACCCAAGT ATTGACTCAC
CCATCAACAA CCGCTATGTA TTTCGTACAT TACTGCCAGC CACCATGAAT
ATTGTACGGT ACCATAAATA CTTGACCACC TGTAGTACAT AAAAACCCAA
TCCACATCAA AACCCCCCCC CCATGNTTTC AAGNAAGNAC AGNAATCAAC
CCTNAANTNT TACANATNAA CTGNAANTCC AAAGCCNCNC CTCNCCCCCT
NGGNTACCAA NAAACCTNCC CCCCCTTAAN AGNNCATAGN ANATAAAGNC
NTTTNCCGNA NATAGNACAT TNCAGTCAAA TCCCTTNTCG NCCCCATGGN
NGACCCCCCN CNNANAGGGG NCCCTTGCNN CCAANTTTTN AAAATTTTTN
TNTNNNNGTN NNNGTTGNNN TTNTNNTGNN NTGNNNNTTG TTNNTNNNNT
TTGNNTGGNN NGNNNNGNNA NNNNTTNTTT TGNTNNNTTN NNGNNTTNGT
NNTGTNNNNT TNNNTNNNNT TGTNAAGNNA ANNNTAANNA ANNTNTNTAC
TNTNTTTTNT NNNTNNNTGN NGNNTNTTNN NGNANTNACT NGNNNTTTNT
TGNNTNTNTA NNGTGNTNNG TTTNNATTAT CNCTN

Some of you know must be wondering why this are a bunch of N’s mixed in with
the standard G,T, A, and C’s. The N’s are just places where the machine could
not determine what the DNA was, a typical occurence in tests of this type.

Now on to Longhorn, if you know what Longhorn is, then you probably also
heard about the conference Microsoft had today to discus it. Thus far, it is all
the rumors said it would be. WinFS appears to be the biggest issue, and a great
idea to boot, especially since it’s based on XML, which might allow more
cross-platform portability. However, a comment Gates made does worry me a bit.
From MSNBC.com,
Gates is paraphrased as saying Longhorn will have “integrated telephone
services.” This could be a good thing, if encompases some sort of answering
machine type device. But if it relates to internet…well, I don’t know. It
would have also been good to see some mention of Voice-over-IP.

Yesterday was a snow day. I had quite a bit of fun playing in the snow. I also ended up watching cars slip and slide as they drove up our hill. When I get my computer back in 13 days, I’ll upload them.

Today was a Slush Day. School was cancelled, again. Woo-hoo!

After almost three weeks of Christmas Break (officially called Winter Break), we finally went back to school today. I was really looking forward to school, but then I had English class. Ugh, I hate English, actually make that Romantic Literature. English is fine, for the most part, but I am not what you would call even remotely romantic…to any degree. So now I want to go back on vacation. On the plus side, the Vocal Concert is almost here (I’m singing in it). Expect pictures from that sometime Sunday night or Monday morning…hopefully.

This last week has been perhaps one of the longest weeks in my life, especially weird considering it only lastedr 3 days. Finials were pretty much a non-event, Wednesday marked the half-way point of Senior year. That pretty much means I have about 5 weeks of “real” school left.

This past week has been rather busy. However, it has also given me a chance to reflect about the past four years the next four to six years. On Friday, I was able to spend a day at CSM and unless CSM falls off the face of the Earth, or CalPolybecome non-traditional, or Caltech suddenly becomes less liberal, Golden, Colorado will be my next stop. Then on Monday and Tuesday, the entire Senior class went to Camp Burton to discus graduation at Meany Hall. That sort of set into motion the idea that there really is only a limited time left. I think that changed the entire attitude of the Senior class. And now today, I’m working on the slide show for one of my buddies who’s getting married in 3 days!! So much has happened, is happening, and will happen over the few months, it’s going to be amazing. The farthest event that I’ve put on my calendar is starting college and that’s only 6 months away or so. I’m not even out of high school. Between now and then I have to:

• Andy and Julia’s Wedding
• Ski @ Whistler
• Hike @ Canyonlands
• Build @ Mexico
• Finish School
• Senior Project @ UW
• Work on Graduation
• Upgrade the Server Hardware
• Upgrade the Server to W2K3 Server
• Figure out long term plans for fergcorp.com and andrewferguson.net
• Configure the entire network to either run by itself or remotely from my dorm in Colorado
• Graduate
• Say Goodbye
• Day Camp
• Clean my room
• Pack
• Go to Shasta
• Migrate to Colorado

…among other things. And that’s just the major stuff I can think of right now. I’m almost afraid to blink my eyes because everything is going to pass by so fast. Ack.

Tomorrow pretty much begins the begin of the end for high school. After four years of pain and suffering, I’m almost done and get to move on to 4+ more years of pain and suffering at college. However, some exciting things have been happening. As I’ve already mentioned multiple times, Andy and Julia were married on Sunday. I also am going to start working on seting up my Windows Server 2003 box today. Tomorrow I have my English test, which will conclude an entire trimester of various trips to hell and back. I also have my final vocal performance. Thursday has a Physics test at 8:30am followed by a Project Materials test at 10:30. I finish the week with a Calc II test and an American Government test. Sounds like buckets of joy…but not.

Well, I just finished by 5th and final Final of my entire high school career. It feels rather good, however, also unsettling. While I work on closing one book in my life, I have to work on opening a brand new book. This has never really been done before, so it will be an interesting time.

I had to get up at 7:30 this morning…at Saturday morning…just to go run around Greenlake. But wait, it gets better! I had to do it in under 30 minutes…and to even my amazement, I did! In 29 minutes and 30 some seconds, just under the cutoff. Perhaps even more impressive than running around all 3.2 miles of Greenlake in under 30 minutes was the fact that I didn’t see a single Canadia Goose! Not a single one! Not even a trace of one. What ever the Seattle Parks Department did, it worked. No crap on the bottom of my shoes this time ’round.